# Quote — Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

> In the person of the magistrate we can distinguish three essentially different wills: first, the private will of the individual, tending only to his personal advantage; secondly, the common will of the magistrates, which is relative solely to the advantage of the prince, and may be called corporate will, being general in relation to the government, and particular in relation to the State, of which the government forms part; and, in the third place, the will of the people or the sovereign will, which is general both in relation to the State regarded as the whole, and to the government regarded as a part of the whole.

- Author: [Jean Jacques Rousseau](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau.md)
- Book: [The Social Contract](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/the-social-contract.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Social_Contract#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/the-social-contract/in-the-person

## More from this book

> Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/the-social-contract/man-is-born.md)

> The body politic, like the human body, begins to die from its birth, and bears in itself the causes of its destruction.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/the-social-contract/the-body-politic.md)

> At Genoa, the word Liberty may be read over the front of the prisons and on the chains of the galley-slaves. This application of the device is good and just. It is indeed only malefactors of all estates who prevent the citizen from being free. In the country in which all such men were in the galleys, the most perfect liberty would be enjoyed.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/the-social-contract/at-genoa-the.md)